Messiah Madness
The month of March means different things to different folks. For the basketball fanatics, especially if you have history with one of the 68 teams who are represented in the tournament, mid-March is the time when you are glued to the TV, watching who is winning, who is losing, and which team lies in the way of your team getting to the Final Four, then on to the championship. The alarm clock always seems to go off way too early in late March, due to the late-night game the night before! Conversations during and after work center around anticipating the next game, figuring out who goofed during the last game, and talking statistics - whose seven-foot-tall center scored how many three-pointers, and if he will do it again next game. Man, it’s hard to get any work done in March! The anticipation, the suspense, the heartbreaks and last-second baskets, all leading up to an unknown outcome - who will win? And then, in early April, after the championship game, we have a winner, a loser, and life returns to normal. Till next year…
My mind rolls back 2,000 years to another showdown not unlike the intense matchups on the basketball court throughout the month of March. I wonder if, for we humans who are created in the image of an awesome God, designed to bring glory to the One who conquers, the competitive nature of this month of “madness” that we love in our culture is ingrained in our DNA. Did the people who lived in the time that Jesus, the son of God, walked this earth in a human body, watch His moves with the same suspense that we have as we monitor our brackets? As they watched the son of Joseph and Mary grow to adulthood and begin the role of Messiah, did they feel the same excitement that a nail-biting game gives us?
Socially, the challenges in Jesus’ game began early - even before birth - with an unwed mother and an earthly father who struggled who make sense of what was happening. A first-round victory was experienced in the temple, with grateful temple servants who praised God for the gift of the simultaneously earthly and divine baby. Shepherds and wise men worshiped, and King Herod struck back, unsuccessfully trying to close out the competition early.
At the age of 12, Jesus gains the eye of the public when He teaches in the temple, astounding the tournament leaders, landing Jesus onto the “ones to watch” list along with His cousin John, who would go on to earn the nickname “the Baptist.” Fast-forward twenty years or so, and things escalate. John the Baptist introduces Jesus to the audience as “Jesus, the Lamb of God, the one who comes to take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Satan quickly intervenes, hitting hard on offense as Jesus is on the verge of starvation in the desert, by tempting Jesus with every earthly thing he can think of. Food, wealth, power, prestige... just bow down! Jesus, without missing a beat, points to the words of His Father, and quickly sends Satan to the other end of the court!
The mother of Jesus sets up the next play, asking Jesus to cover for a friend in need at the friend’s wedding. Jesus turns water into the finest wine, preventing an embarrassing situation from happening to the bride and groom, and now the crowd is really paying attention. Time and again, as the opposition presses in, Jesus puts points on the board and wins on the record, healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding thousands, forgiving sins! The officials - allies to the opposing team - are beside themselves, desperately trying to find loopholes to slow Him down game by game.
But as they’re scheming about how to stop Him, Jesus’ team of twelve are boldly stepping up, taking His offerings and scoring in His shadow, gaining confidence as He leads them through the tournament! The number of those watching continues to grow as Jesus stays on course with the plays laid out by the Coach. The crowd’s interest peaks, and a packed house everywhere Jesus goes becomes the normal.
Coming into the final week and then the championship game, the tension is intense! Jesus is pouring Himself into His team as they fend off the enemy. The crowd grows confused; who should they cheer for? They cannot ignore the way Jesus cares for His team, and the massive amount of points He’s racking up, but the enemy is also insistently hanging in there, inciting team pride and crying foul play, stirring up the audience! Who will win? Then something changes. The officials call foul, when there was no foul - He was not even close to the ball. The other refs agree, and then, just when He could have protested, could have defended himself against this ridiculous call, Jesus says nothing. Not a word. On top of that, when the other team has a player fouled out, Jesus steps in and takes his foul as well! What is going on?
The crowd, confused, begins to leave; it’s obvious that it’s game over. How could it come to this? All this momentum, three years of incredible play leading up to this pinnacle moment in the fourth quarter, and then, seemingly, sudden death? Why? He was so good - how could the adversary pull this off? With Jesus out of the game, the adversary is scoring points left and right, and as expected, pulls ahead in the final minutes of the game. The heartbroken crowd barely notices. Something huge is missing now that Jesus was absent from the game.
And then, as the final seconds tick down, the unbelievable happens! Jesus strides onto the court! His teammates, stunned, huddle around Him, touching Him, scarcely believing it to be real! A quick look at the scoreboard shows NO fouls! It is Jesus, and indeed, He’s back in the game! At the whistle, with no effort whatsoever, He throws a three-pointer from center court: nothing but net, and the game is over!
While this silly story holds nothing of value compared to what our Savior really did on behalf of mankind in that series of events 2,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what was the “gameplay” in that saga like? We get a glimpse. John tells us in the Gospel of John, at the very end of chapter 21, that if all of Christ’s “plays” in history were written down - well, I’ll let him tell it. The new King James version puts it like this:
And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written down one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
It was a crazy time indeed! Hard to believe, but that “March madness” was real, and what a victory it was for you and me, a victory that will be celebrated for eternity, literally. Let the celebration continue! Hallelujah, what a win!